E. Belfort Bax

Critical Chronicle

The Death Of Kurt Eisner

(13 March 1919)


E. Belfort Bax, Critical Chronicle: The Death of Kurt Eisner, Justice, 13th March 1919, p.4.
Transcribed by Ted Crawford.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.


E. Belfort Bax writes:– “The news that Kurt Eisner has been struck down by the hand of the assassin will come as a heavy blow to all sincere Socialists the world over. In our late comrade Kurt Eisner the cause of rational and sane Socialism is deprived of one who was in life its ardent champion, and in death its hero and its martyr. It is not too much to say that that throughout the length and breadth of Germany in this troubled time the great Bavarian Socialist, thinker, and organiser has left no equal. Eisner was tireless in his endeavours to open the eyes of his countrymen to the criminality and perfidy of the German Imperial Government from the beginning of the war onwards. His attitude at the recent Congress in Berne in opposing the German ‘Majority’ delegates, and in supporting in an eloquent speech the French comrades Thomas and Renaudel, will be in the remembrance of all. Opposed alike to Bolshevism and Opportunism, Kurt Eisner was just the man who is wanted at the present time in Germany. He was the type of the sane revolutionary leader. While pointing out the absurdity of the attempt to realise the ideal of a complete Socialist Commonwealth ‘overnight’ as it were, he was none the less a determined opponent of all opportunist trickery and of all policy that did not have integral Socialism as its conscious aim. I well recall a walk on Hampstead Heath I had some five-and-twenty years ago with Kurt Eisner and his friend, the late Julius Motteler, so well known as ‘the Red Postmaster.’ Eisner was then quite a young man, and the quiet, thoughtful face, with its expression, none the less, of energy and determination, will not easily be forgotten. He was, indeed, a man whom Germany, and not only Germany but Humanity, can ill afford to lose.”

 


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